Pretty good knockdown of anti-AI Luddism by Noah Smith. It seems that many of the canon arguments or concerns about AI dont have any backing in research
Like the claim that AI is a major strain on the U.S. freshwater supply:
The U.S. consumes approximately 132 billion gallons of freshwater daily…So data centers in the U.S. consumed approximately 0.2% of the nation’s freshwater in 2023…However, the water that was actually used onsite in data centers was only 50 million gallons per day…Only 0.04% of America’s freshwater in 2023 was consumed inside data centers themselves. This is 3% of the water consumed by the American golf industry
To claims that AI is causing unemployment.
"In fact, one recent study found that industries that are predicted to use AI more are seeing no slowdown in wages, and have experienced robust employment growth for workers in their 30s, 40s, and 50s"
"The study did find a slowdown in hiring for younger workers. But other studies find no effect of AI on jobs at all so far. Obviously, many workers are afraid of losing their jobs to AI, but those losses don’t seem to have materialized yet, so it’s a bit silly when AI critics like Regunberg present job losses as established fact."https://open.substack.com/pub/noahpinion/p/i-love-ai-why-doesnt-everyone?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=9fyuy
I am personally looking forward to AI revolution. I think it will bring apart an Industrial Revolution 2.0. I think all the AI cynics will look as foolish to the Luddites in time
Posted by drcombatwombat2
12 Comments
There’s the AI revolution and then there is management telling you to use a tool that you have to double-check everything as if they were a new hire because sometimes it just makes things up or gets basic facts wrong. On top of that, while the water usage may be overstated, the power draw is not and rate payers are feeling it.
I wouldn’t say I’m anti AI but I’m underwhelmed. It’s great for writing bs corporate forms so that’s pretty nice but I only trust it for things that are unimportant.
So, I agree that a lot of the common criticisms don’t hold up. That having been said, it is *incredibly annoying* how much AI is being shoved into our faces and shoehorned into our lives. If the product is that good, we’ll just start using it. No need to mandate that I run a certain number of AI-based queries at work every day.
Make it work well and I’ll like it
I’m sure ai will bring productivity gains in certain sectors of the economy, but I am incredibly overwhelmed by all of the slop found online. The AI writing style is incredibly fucking annoying (“it’s not a [noun], it’s a [synonym]” anyone?) And the idea that any given video I see is increasingly likely to be made up with no easy way to distinguish that is a terrifying concept. These drawbacks alone jave soured me on a lot of the hype, to be honest.
>The study did find a slowdown in hiring for younger workers.
Well that’s not a good thing lol.
> those losses don’t seem to have materialized yet, so it’s a bit silly when AI critics like Regunberg present job losses as established fact
Agreed, but saying we don’t know if it will happen won’t help either.
Because the most impactful use cases seem to be generating propaganda images/videos and collating surveillance data
>I like things with a soul
-Normies who don’t want to be fled machine-generated turgid slop
>OMG source???
-Noah Smith
I’m just not savvy enough to recognize AI enough to be annoyed by it, and my ability is only going to shrink as AI gets better. (Yes, I know this means I’m probably ripe for a scam.) I find it all fascinating that this is where we are and–maybe I’m naive–I’m really looking forward to the ways that this technology will be used for good.
I started using Chat GPT this year, and it’s ok, it’s somewhat useful I guess but not so useful that I think it will replace 80% of jobs.
I’m sure it has real uses for some people but my lived experience of AI consists almost entirely of people usually plagiarism to generate spam and clickbait.
Because the people who are its main advocates primarily use it to generate brainrot slop and are really, really fucking annoying.
I’m convinced the AI firms put out the water thing. The real issue is electricity and frankly it’s so obvious i don’t understand how the water thing even took off.
Between the fictional data it will generate and then admit under pushback, the reliance i’m seeing in real time on LLMs, the amount of ai cv’s we just received at work. I don’t like it and i think the people relying on it are gonna fuck themselves. The people using it as a “tool” is far less than the people who are just outsourcing everything to it imo. The ramifications of this sort of thing i think are being too easily dismissed as Luddism tbh.